Screenrights has announced six projects will be supported by the 2023 round of its annual Cultural Fund, to total $265,763 in funding for this year’s focus of ‘New Visions’.
“It’s wonderful that the Screenrights membership is able to support the wider creative community through the Cultural Fund,” Screenrights Board Director and Cultural Fund Working Group Chair Rachel Antony commented “Our assessors had a wide range of compelling applications to consider, from across Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand, and I’m inspired by the aims of all the selected projects and look forward to seeing the impact they create.” Antony explained that for the second year running Screenrights provided an Expression of Interest process to assist applicants who might benefit from extra support during the application stage. Indicative of the success of this approach, five out of the six successful grant recipients had engaged with this process.
Black Apple Productions will develop and deliver a bespoke national screen directing workshop for six First Nations women, with ‘THE LAB: First Nations Women Screen Directors Lab’ receiving a grant of $50,000. Pink Lake Creative will receive $45,000 for their Pathways and Connections Workshop Program, which will see 40 children from three isolated communities in western Victoria participate in screen industry workshops focused on augmented technology. Sound recordist Alicia Butterworth and sound designer Tfer Newsome’s ‘Developing Diverse Screen Sound Practitioner Futures’ will receive $50,000 for a series of training workshops for under-represented emerging female and non-binary screen-sound professionals, supported by Griffith University and SAE Brisbane.
The Queer Screen Development Toolkit aims to provide support, guidance and resources for teams developing screen projects that feature queer themes, storylines, characters and actors, and will be generated with the assistance of a $30,730 grant and in collaboration with the industry by Wellington’s Proud Voices on Screen. Another New Zealand project, Touch Compass’ Screen Production Programme for d/Deaf and Disabled Students, will receive $50,000 to engage and teach Deaf and Disabled aspiring filmmakers the skills required to tell their own stories and build careers. And The Unquiet Collective will receive $50,000 for their Distribution and Impact Lab, an intensive social impact and non-theatrical planning lab for three films in the lead-up to their release.
Antony explained that applications were assessed by a panel of professionals with both local and international expertise in screen, media and education.
